There are people like me out there? ;-)

[mymendingwall]

Wow.  I am not alone apparently.  I have been living and reliving fantasy lives in my head for over forty years.  Amazing that I am not alone as all these years I've thought that I'm just crazy and no one knows about it!  I started a blog to sort of journal my journey of change.  If anyone wants to read it, it's at www.mymendingwall.com.

I'm not sure that daydreaming is really a good term for this.  Daydreaming sounds so simple, so pure, makes me think of that song, Daydream Believer.  It's much more than daydreaming.  It's being consumed in elaborate fantasies that go on and on for days, week, months, and every waking hour is spent thinking about it, even when you are going through your real life motions.  

I grew up in a pretty volatile situation.   My mother and father divorced when I was pretty young.  My mother was abusive and very neglectful.  My step-father was extremely abusive toward her mostly, and somewhat toward my brothers and I.  After my mother escaped with us and started live without him, she started going out to bars and leaving us at home alone. We lived on a beautiful street in a beautiful house, and no one would imagine what was going on behind our closed doors.  I think that my environment  was the culprit in my increasing and more elaborate daydreams.

I always tested well in school and did all my work, but teachers couldn't figure out why I was inattentive.  That was written on my report card several times.  I wasn't a recluse or a loner.  I was actually quite popular.   But I was very fake, like one of the characters in my daydreams.  I was surrounded by "friends" yet I was very unhappy.  I felt like those people would NEVER like the real me, or understand the real me.  I could control my characters so that they not only understood me, they revered me. 

I battled with keeping my daydreams at bay so that I could finish college, but it was difficult.  High school teachers stay on top of their students about getting their work turned in, but college... different story.  I'd go to the library, open up a book, and commence the daydreaming life.  It's an obsession.

I have other obsessions.  I count... EVERYTHING.  I look for patterns all the time and trace them.  I write words with my finger on my leg when I get nervous.  Weird things like that.  

I did manage in the  40+ years to end up having a wonderful husband (who is not quite Mr. Darcy, but close,) and a really great job that I love and am very good at.  Ironically, I am a Reading Specialist for a public school system.  I still DD ALL the time, but sometimes it's just in the background, replaying like a DVD, I've just learned to manage it properly.

[mymendingwall]

Wow. I am reading your blog and seeing so many similarities.  We need to chat in PM!

[mymendingwall]

I think you are on to something with the inattentiveness and mind-wandering tendencies.  My teacher marked my report card  each grading period "inattentive."  I'm amazed at how much I learned by paying so little attention.  I often wonder how I would have been if was capable of giving my full attention to tasks.   Even when I am not engaged with my DD's,  my mind does not stay focused on one thing.  I am a fabulous multitasker, but I trained myself to be with lots of willpower.  I looked at my real life for what it was and made a decision to change.  I really hope the best for you!  Please stay in contact with me through your journey of coping with this perplexing condition!  I'm really glad to meet and know you!

[mymendingwall]

@Laine, About the finger writing thing, it started on a 2 hour trip in the car with my mother.  She is narcissistic, so she makes up these elaborate lies (I wonder if she just daydreams out loud sometimes!!!) so I just wrote my name over and over with my finger on my leg.  It's weird.  

@Elude, in college, I made excellent grades in the classes that I loved, but the others, I just let my mind wander into an elaborate fantasy.  I was the "star" of the show in my head.  So, what I did to help me focus on school work, is that I incorporated school into my fantasies.  So part of the "fantasy" was me being at school.  I would have conversations in my head with "characters" who were there with me in my classes, taking the classes, too.  It sounds extremely insane, and I have never told anyone about it until now.  And then, after a couple of years in my career, I became pretty successful.  I am a Reading Specialist, so I teach teachers in order to improve their reading instruction.  I present at the local and state level.  So, when I am busy with work, the daydreams are non-existent.  The daydreaming was an escape, a coping tool of dissociation.  It seems that the more secure I am with my life, the less I rely on the daydreams to get me through the day.  But they are still here, and still in the way sometimes.  There are days when I just stay in bed and call in sick just because my brain can't take another day without an escape.  I have a blog if you are interested in knowing more about the abuse and escaping it to become the person I am today.  www.mymendingwall.com

[taffle]

I used to also do weird things such as writing words on the table with my fingers, and people notice that. My fantasies can be pretty intense too, but I try not to let them interfere with my schoolwork. Now, I'm writing a novel based on my fantasies, which helps me take my mind off of many of the scenes that keep replaying in my head.

[greyartist]

Some call it compulsive fantasy, which I think is more fitting. But MD is more recognizable from articles that have been written.